View from the C-Suite: Executive Leadership Lessons from Donald Thompson

Donald Thompson gave a talk to the MBA students at NC State titled View from the C Suite, where DT shares his thoughts on effective leadership strategies, taking charge during meetings, and how to turn a thousand dollars worth of coffee into a million dollars worth of insight.

Transcript

Donald Thompson: So one of the things that I’ll share with you all today and kind of the premise of the talk. You’ve heard about leadership being a journey, right? That’s something that’s a common thing, but people don’t usually finish that thought. Right? What are the elements of that journey? And that’s some of the things that we’re going to talk about today and I’ll use a lot of the stories in terms of my personal context, because my journey has been, has had ebbs and flows.

Right? One of the things that, um, when you’re talking to someone that has been a CEO or that sold companies or different things, the version of me that you see is a more finished product and that’s not necessarily the most applicable and so one of the things that I’ll share with you is how I became a business leader, how I became a CEO and created that product, and that’s really, really important. 

And I’m going to tell this a story. I do not have, uh, an MBA. I have a, uh, I call it a hustler’s MBA, right? One cup of coffee at a time, one magazine article at a time, and that was my uh, way to rise. But I remember when going into a bookstore was a cool thing to do, right like into the store, right. It was on the internet. Like you would go into Barnes and Nobles, you would buy a cup of coffee and sit in Barnes and Nobles and, and you’d read, or you’d go peruse the magazines.

Full Episode Transcript

The Donald Thompson Podcast is hosted by The Diversity Movement CEO and Executive Coach Donald Thompson, and is a production of Earfluence.

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